Doctor in Mobile Communication Systems

Eskeland’s work is related to security in Electronic patient records (EPRs). An EPR contains personal and highly sensitive patient data, and it is therefore necessary to limit the accessibility of such data and to ensure proper and lawful access to EPRs.

A basic criterion for this should be legitimacy, meaning that only medical personnel that is to provide medical care to a given patient (or patients) should be granted access to the necessary medical data of the concerning patient they are providing care to, thus in agreement with the need-to-know principle.

Proper enforcement of this would help to prevent illegitimate persons from accessing patient data. This could be implemented by means of patient consent or by group consensus, where the consent of a minimum number of concerned participants could qualify authorization of EPR access. Since medical care is often provided by medical teams, the consensus of a minimum number of the team members would thus act as a qualifying criterion for such teams to acquire EPR access.

In his thesis, Eskeland presented a number of cryptographic methods for secure establishment of EPR access for concerned medical practitioners, and for securing the transmission of such data over insecure wireless networks.

Important work and solid analysis

The assessment committee, headed by associate professor Jens Myrup Pedersen from Aalborg University, concluded that Eskeland has delivered very good and important work with a solid analysis of the field, as well as suggesting novel aspects within secure wireless systems. His presentation was also very good.

- Sigurd was a very active student, says supervisor Oleshchuk, he was self motivated and very interested in his work, and always tried to discuss and test new solutions.

The new doctor himself returns

- And the years I spent doing my doctorate at UiA in Grimstad was the most interesting so far in my career. Considering studies and working experience, I found it very stimulating to do research in the field of cryptographic protocols for the medical scenario, and to participate in the development of new such methods.

- Travels to conferences let me meet interesting people and see new places, continues Sigurd, and although the research environment at UiA was limited within this specialized field, my supervisor has always kept an open door and provided me with helpful suggestions and comments.

Now Sigurd has joined the Norwegian Patent Office where he is working with patents within TV and image transmission, a field which is closely related to his previous engineering background.

Text by Stein Bergsmark

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